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Money will go toward adding staff, expanding number of monitoring sites on the Great Lakes

Ottawa spending $20M to fight spread of Asian carp

Mark McNeil, The Hamilton Spectator

Wednesday, January 24, 2018
8:41:54 EST PM

MP Karina Gould holds a black carp in a lab at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters as she talks with Julia Colm, an aquatic biologist, about the fish as Beverly Cudmore, manager for the centre of invasive specifies program, looks on. (John Rennison/Hamilton Spectator)

The federal government is stepping up efforts to try to keep highly destructive Asian carp from spreading into the Great Lakes.

On Tuesday, Karina Gould, minister for democratic institutions and MP for Burlington, announced $20 million in federal funding over five years to increase monitoring, risk assessment and containment efforts of the invasive species in Canadian waters.

The money will be directed to the Asian Carp Program run out of a laboratory at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters on Eastport Drive in Burlington. The new funds will be used to increase staff to 10 from three and monitor 54 sites on the Canadian side instead of 32.

As well the funding will be used to increase public awareness of the issue, asking Canadians to be on lookout for the four different varieties of Asian carp; grass, black, bighead and silver.

Of those four only the grass carp has been spotted in Canadian waters so far.

The Asian carp is a major threat to the Great Lakes fishery, estimated to be worth $7 billion to Canadian and United States economies. Several decades ago, the destructive fish were accidentally released into the Mississippi River and have been spreading northward ever since.

The fish are extraordinarily resilient and voracious eaters who crowd out native species wherever they establish themselves.

Asked whether she feels U.S. authorities are committed to the issue, Gould said, “I think what we have seen on this file is continued collaboration and recognition that this is important for the health of the Great Lakes whether on the Canadian or American side.”

Bob Lambe, executive secretary of Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a binational commission made up of representatives of the United States and Canada, said “the Americans are doing monitoring, too, but most of their money is being used for containment efforts on the Mississippi. “

American governments have hired major commercial fishing companies to try to remove as much Asian carp from the river as possible. Over the past five years, more than 8 million pounds have been captured and taken from the river to be used for pet food, said Lambe.

Interestingly, of the 54 monitoring sites in the Great Lakes, Hamilton Harbour is not one of them.

Becky Cudmore, manager of the Asian carp program with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said the harbour could eventually end up with Asian carp but research suggests there are a lot of other places on the Great Lakes that would catch the eye of migrating fish first.

“We know they like big rivers (which Hamilton Harbour does not connect with). We know what kind of temperatures they like. We hone in on that.

“It doesn’t mean they couldn’t show up in Hamilton and hang out with the other carp. But it would be a needle in a haystack. We’re trying to use our knowledge to target where they are likely to be at various times of the year.”

Hamilton Harbour already has a carp problem with common or European carp, which have wreaked havoc on the bay for decades. A barrier was built to try to keep the fish out of the environmentally sensitive Cootes Paradise back in the 1990s.

The Asian Carp Program began in 2012 and so far has done examinations on 25 grass carp that have been caught in Canadian waters.

Of the ones found so far, nine were fertile and the rest either sterile (14) or their fertility could not be determined (two). So far there is no evidence of migrating Asian carp reproducing in Canadian waters.

“If we catch one we go immediately into emergency response, “ Cudmore said. That includes an intensive search of the area for further carp and removal.